A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
B. F. SKINNERWhat is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.
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A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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